As part of our 2025 Higher Ground Institute Media Innovation Fellowship spotlight series, we’re featuring six visionary leaders advancing bold new approaches to progressive digital media. These Fellows are developing tools and strategies that expand what’s possible in how campaigns communicate, connect, and persuade.

In this piece we’re featuring Liz Utrup—a seasoned communications strategist whose career began on President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and has since spanned political campaigns, government, issue advocacy, and paid media. Now Managing Director at A|L Media, Liz leads account services for Democratic candidates and causes nationwide, shaping paid media campaigns that reach millions of voters.

With her HGI project, The Real People Project, Liz is pioneering a voter research initiative that uses online ethnography to observe how voters actually engage with digital content in real time. By capturing and analyzing social media consumption directly from voters’ perspectives, the project aims to uncover the narratives that shape how people see the world—and how campaigns can meet them more authentically online.

We spoke with Liz about her path from the Obama campaign to the HGI Fellowship, the missing piece she sees in progressive communications strategy, and her vision for a more grounded, voter-centered approach to digital engagement.

HGI: What inspired you to apply for the HGI Media Innovation fellowship?

Liz: I applied to the HGI Media Innovation Fellowship because the future of political communication depends on how well we meet voters where they are, which is often online. So much of our daily lives is shaped by the content we see, hear, and engage with. Voters are increasingly turning to social channels to find information. They’re watching and absorbing narratives, political and otherwise, online, and those narratives shape how they see and experience the world.

As a communications professional, I’ve seen how much depth and sophistication we’ve brought to paid and earned media. Mastering how to integrate organic content with earned and paid media feels like the missing piece in a narrative trifecta. To do that, we need to understand what content voters pay attention to online and why. 

This fellowship offers the chance to explore a timely idea: that our online social experiences mirror who we are—our thoughts, curiosities, questions, and what resonates with us. Together, these reflections offer insights into how social preferences play a critical role in mapping opportunities for impactful voter connection. In this political moment, deepening our understanding of voters is not just valuable; it’s essential.

HGI: How did your personal background and professional experiences plant the seed for this project?

Liz: My earliest days in politics immersed me in direct voter contact. I was running the Obama for America 2008 national call center, where I trained and managed 100+ interns and volunteers to cover dozens of phone lines, fielding thousands of calls seven days a week from morning to night. It wasn’t until the general election that I pivoted to communications-related work. And then in the administration, I made a full transition into press and eventually paid media. 

In those early days of running an operation that fielded thousands of voter calls, I came to understand the true value of authentic connection. The kind of authentic connection that happens when you listen to voters on their terms, and in doing so, you realize that them surfacing their concerns, questions, frustrations, and hopes can signal resonant narratives that will capture their engagement. This Media Innovation Fellowship represents a return to that foundational experience of listening to voters more directly. With this project, I hope to unlock a new approach to gathering insights that communicators can use to connect more deeply and authentically with voters.

HGI: What problem or opportunity are you aiming to address as a Media Innovation Fellow?

Liz: Democrats lost ground in 2024 with key voters: young voters, immigrants, and working-class communities, among others. Many of these audiences were influenced by online narratives we couldn’t fully identify, let alone understand in a timely way. The Real People Project addresses a central challenge facing political operatives in a digital-first information system: how do we uncover the content that shapes how voters see the world and their place in it?

This project offers an opportunity to develop a scalable, real-time research or understanding of social media consumption. 

We know a lot about which social platforms groups of voters use, but not what they’re seeing or how they react to that content. This project fills that gap by observing real people in real time as they scroll through their feeds, narrate their reactions, share their curiosities, and surface the content that interests them most.

My hope is that we can build on our research methods in ways that help us anticipate emerging narratives, identify persuasive content, and build more effective communications strategies that sync with how voters engage online.

HGI: In what ways is your approach leveraging innovation or emerging technologies differently than current tools or strategies?

Liz: Rather than rely on what voters self-disclose about their online behavior, the Real People Project observes it directly. We will use online ethnography to screen-record firsthand, voice-narrated walkthroughs of content consumption on voters’ preferred platform/s. Unlike solicited hypothetical responses or group convenings, online ethnography gives voters the opportunity to share their experience without removing them from their digital environment.

HGI: Can you tell us about online ethnography and how it can help progressives better understand the media habits of voters?

Liz: Online ethnography flips the script when it comes to understanding voters. Instead of recruiting voters to participate on our terms and react to messages or issues we come up with, online ethnography allows us to take a direct look into their world at their convenience. It will enable us to observe, with minimal imposition, how voters consume content, what content they’re inclined to engage with, and what repeated narratives or themes are present in their everyday lives. For progressives, this means better insights into the kinds of stories, formats, and tones that persuade people. It can help us build algorithmically effective messaging strategies. It gives us a way to move beyond what voters say to see firsthand what they pay attention to. While not yet deployed in politics, this research approach is already commonplace in commercial markets.

HGI: How do you see the role of social media in shaping political discourse and voter behavior evolving in the future? 

Liz: Social media is a frontline for political organizing and communications. And that influence is only growing more personalized and more immersive, with little insight into how it plays out for the user. That’s both a challenge and an opportunity. The role of social media in shaping voter knowledge and behavior is becoming more deeply embedded in daily life. Our job is to understand it and embrace social media as central to strategic planning.

HGI: What’s one popular assumption or myth that you’re excited to challenge or disrupt?

Liz: An assumption I want to challenge is that a comprehensive digital strategy, integrated with paid and earned communications planning, is a nice-to-have but not a need-to-have. The average American spends more than two hours on social media every day. That number only increases among Millennials and Gen Z audiences, both of which are proving to be pivotal voting blocks. The future of political media will be won by those who can grab attention on these platforms, and to do that effectively, we must understand why they’re online and what they’re paying attention to.

HGI: What will the space look like if/when your project has succeeded?

Liz: If the Real People Project succeeds, communicators will have more confident mapping tools, not just detailing where to find voters but also how to reach them, what to say, and how to say it. Communications strategies will be grounded in real digital behavior. We’ll understand not just what people believe, but what content feeds those beliefs. We’ll build content that earns attention, not just impressions. Most importantly, we’ll close the gap between media planning and real persuasion, because we’ll be building from the voters’ vantage point.

HGI: What keeps you optimistic about the future of the progressive movement?

Liz: I’m optimistic about the future because I firmly believe that if we want progressive campaigns to achieve more successful outcomes, we must tirelessly focus on driving a compelling narrative. The future of politics belongs to those who are willing to listen. I see endless potential in improving our methods for connecting with voters who feel unseen or unheard. The digital world has fragmented our attention, but it has also created space for entirely new ways of reaching people. We just have to meet voters where they are. And they’re online.